According to the Wall Street Journal, Coca-Cola and Cargill are working on a new sweetener code-named rebiana. The sweetener is being derived from stevia, which is a South American herb.

The article in the WSJ raises questions about the safety of rebiana. If you have a subscription, I suggest reading it. (It might also be in the print version of the Journal, which can be found at most libraries).

I put a post about the article and the sweetener in our fitness blog this morning. Even if the sweetener gets FDA approval, it might be prudent to still avoid the sweetener for a few years until its full safety is known.

-Charles

Google stevia - and you'll find an equal amount of sources that will tell you it's the greatest thing in the world and that wil ltell you it's dangerous. It's a debate that's been around for a while now and the conspiracy theories are laughably interesting...

I've tried it and find it to have a very unpleasant taste... FDA can approve it if they want i'll stick with lemon

fun fact: non-nutritive sweeteners are not actually non-nutritive. Instead they are just types of sugar that are upwards of 2000x sweeter than normal table sugar. basically what happens is that because they are so much sweeter it takes far less of the actual compound to sweeten whatever you are eating. its like if you only ate a very small sliver of a steak instead of the whole thing, ultimate portion control, lol. there is also a similar approach with most non-stick calorie free cooking sprays. aerating the oil just makes the serving size incredibly small, which allows them to call it calorie and fat free.


anyways, i remember reading a bit about some theories (not sure if there were any studies actually done yet) about how even though there may not be any calories in "non-nutritive" sweeteners, the sweet taste still triggers some of our body's functions, causing similar responses (such as releasing insulin) to normal sugar anyways. of course, releasing insulin causes changes in blood sugar levels, which affects hunger, and (if i remember right) insulin is also linked to signaling fat storage. insulin release without any actual increase in blood sugar could also cause your blood sugar to drop, which if taken far enough is even fatal.